Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The armpit.
- n. A body part analogous to the armpit, such as the hollow under a bird's wing.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In anatomy, the armpit; a region of the body in the recess between the upper arm (or in birds the upper part of the wing) and the side of the chest beneath the shoulder. It is pyramidal in shape, its apex corresponding to the interval between the scaleni muscles opposite the first rib.
- n. In botany, same as axil, 2.
Wiktionary
- n. The armpit, or the cavity beneath the junction of the arm and shoulder.
- n. botany, uncommon Alternative form of axil.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Anat.) The armpit, or the cavity beneath the junction of the arm and shoulder.
- n. (Bot.) An axil.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the hollow under the arm where it is joined to the shoulder
Etymologies
- From Latin axilla ("side, armpit"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The axilla is a pyramidal space, situated between the upper lateral part of the chest and the medial side of the arm.”
“One or two small branches supplying the anterior fold of the axilla are the only vessels divided, and may not even require ligature, unless, indeed, from necrosis, or to remove a tumour,”
“A doctor writes, The hair, face, axilla, and groin usually harbor the greatest number of bacteria.”
“The key finding is that for women with apparently limited disease before lumpectomy and what's called a positive sentinel node, taking out all the cancerous nodes from the axilla armpit has no survival advantage after five years.”
The Huffington Post: Dr. Elaine Schattner: New Study Supports Less Surgery For Breast Cancer
“Titled "Measurement of paraben concentrations in human breast tissue at serial locations across the breast from axilla to sternum," the team of researchers, led by Dr. Philippa Darbre from the University of Reading in the UK, found that virtually all -- 99 percent -- of the tissue samples collected from women participating in the study contained at least one paraben, and 60 percent of the samples contained no less than five parabens.”
“A. J. Harbach, b L. A. Savoyc and P. D. Darbred* "Measurement of paraben concentrations in human breast tissue at serial locations across the breast from axilla to sternum.”
The Huffington Post: Dr. Nalini Chilkov: Study Finds Parabens in Cosmetics Linked to Breast Cancer
“When the young woman directly in front of me attempted to adjust her air vent, she lifted her right arm exposing her axilla to the waft of the air nozzle.”
“The neck can be cleaned out as thoroughly as the axilla.”
“Of the sixty patients with no cancer-afflicted nodes in the axilla or the neck, the substantial number of forty-five had been cured of breast cancer at five years.”
“In the summer of 1907, Halsted presented more data to the American Surgical Association in Washington, D.C. He divided his patients into three groups based on whether the cancer had spread before surgery to lymph nodes in the axilla or the neck.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘axilla’.
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SCIE - Be the first...
... to use these words in spoken English and reap esteem. In the SPOKEN corpus of the COCA (full corpus: 450 million words) none of these occur.
stochastic, disputant, state-led, almshouse, exceptionality, bibliographical, t-test, z-score, personal/social, neoplastic, stroma, ludic and 288 more...
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Rare Words - A
Not just rare words, but thousands of RARE WORDS WITH DEFINITIONS.
If you want to see the definitions, too, go to
http://phrontistery.i...aba, abacinate, abactor, abaculus, abaft, abampere, abapical, abarticular, abasement, abasia, abask, abatis and 1214 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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On with their heads!
Words that make other words with the addition of one letter at the beginning. The resulting words are tagged "behead".
men, his, yes, any, iota, limb, aged, laid, land, lead, read, word and 327 more...
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phrontistery - a
from phrontistery.info
axilla, avalement, argil, argent, argand, arete, aretaics, areometer, areology, arenoid, arenaceous, arefy and 1214 more...
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•body-related words that make lovely ...
With thanks to quinn for the idea, seen here. It's true that most diseases cannot double as names for baby boys—but some can. And anyway in their absence I nominate (thanks to Colon/Colin) body p...
colon, lung, langerhans, cuticle, spleen, glottis, calyx, anus, peter, pertussis, strabismus, erysipelas and 26 more...
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Good Words
fenestering, cetic, immanent, quickening, archetypal, shibboleth, soma, wetware, heritable, Apotheosis, halcyon, cellar door and 482 more...
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Olaf's list
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It Has a Name??
Yes. Yes it does.
aglet, armsaye, scroop, rowel, ferrule, rasceta, chanking, philtrum, frenulum, keeper, agelast, punt and 285 more...
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bloodworm's list
These are words that I enjoy because they are unique, rare, long, or just cool.
circumlocution, hysteresis, schadenfreude, quixotic, loquacious, ennui, sesquipedalian, defenestrate, obfuscate, syzygy, ubiquitous, superfluous and 231 more...
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Words I Learned on FreeRice.com
A place for me to keep all these weird words, whether I guessed them correctly or not.
pennoncel, serval, tautological, redact, ganef, candent, shaitan, bifid, osteal, ensiform, helve, ecdysis and 100 more...
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Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 1991 more...
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Clearinghouse
For stuff to simply reside.
calcar, pinion, espadrille, antipodes, peregrine, cormorant, tanager, vireo, farrago, undervest, passerine, oscine and 881 more...
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karnage's Words
furbelow, farinaceous, fendrake, rhizobium, imbricate, quaquaversal, exstasis, grapheme, scissiparity, apterous, obdurant, omphalos and 135 more...
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Kaichi's Wordie Darlings, or I'm a Lo...
persnickety, discombobulated, braggadoccio, anthropomorphous, antelucan, confluxible, anomalous, poseur, gallivant, poppycock, falderal, gewgaw and 705 more...
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anatomy&science words i love
canal of schlemm, spleen, gubernaculum, dura mater, alveoli, jejunum, axilla, sella turcica, coccyx, eosinophil, hematoxylin, sarcolemma and 1 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for axilla.
chained_bear "In Italy one doctor gave intravenous injections of mercuric chloride. Another rubbed creosote, a disinfectant, into the axilla, where lymph nodes, outposts of white blood cells scattered through the body, lie beneath the skin. A third insisted that enemas of warm milk and one drop of creosote every twelve hours for every year of age prevented pneumonia."
—John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (NY: Penguin Books, 2004), 354 Feb 17, 2009
chained_bear What a delightful word for armpit! May 15, 2008